Plextor PlexWriter Premium (52/32/52) review @ CDRLabs.com

With the
Premium, Plextor raised the bar for the entire industry. Instead of
putting out another drive with only a slight bump in reading and writing
speeds, the Premium comes through with new and innovative technologies
like GigaRec, SecuRec and Q-Check. After seeing these features in action,
its easy to see why Plextor is considered by many to be one of the leaders
in the optical storage industry.

Unfortunately, Plextor's new writer did not perform as well as I had
expected. With some of the fastest reading and writing speeds available
and a name like the "Premium," I really expected the drive to blow me
away. Instead, the drive had some very mixed performance. For example,
while the Premium had some of the lowest seek times we've seen, it had a
hard time reaching its rated speeds in our tests. On the other hand, the
Premium was able to rip audio CD's pretty well. With Speed Read enabled,
it was able to reach a maximum DAE speed of 52x in our tests.

Last but definitely not least you have the features. Let me say that
the Premium is one of the most feature packed writers I've tested. The
drive includes many of the features we've come to expect from Plextor
including BURN-Proof, PoweRec and VariRec along with a number of new ones
available only on the Premium. SecuRec and the Silent Mode will definitely
appeal to those that need to secure their data or work in noise sensitive
areas. What really stole the show was GigaRec. With GigaRec's ability to
store up to 1GB of data onto a 700MB disc, this feature will probably come
in handy for many. On the other hand, I wish Plextor would have included a
different software suite. While PlexTools Professional is a great
addition, something a little more robust than Roxio's Easy CD Creator is
needed with a professional caliber drive like the
Premium.